Someone Speaks Your Name

By Luis García Montero and Katie King

A lyrical novel following an idealistic student who explores the power of literature in Franco’s Spain.
 
It’s the summer of 1963 and León Egea, a cocky nineteen-year-old student and aspiring author, has just finished his first year studying literature at the University of Granada and is starting a summer job as an encyclopedia salesman. León, infuriated by the injustices in Spanish society under the Franco dictatorship, comes to find that literature can speak the truth when the reality is clouded. 
 
In this coming-of-age novel by renowned Spanish writer Luis García Montero, León discovers that, under the repressive Franco dictatorship, people, places, and events are not always what they seem. But literature, words, and names open paths to discovery, both personal and political. Through lyrical fast-paced narrative, Someone Speaks Your Name explores literature as a foundation for understanding human relationships, national character, discrete differences between right and wrong, and for pursuing the path forward. As León’s professor tells him: “Learning to write is learning to see.”
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Swan Isle Press
• Release date: Apr 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9781961056008

Book preview

The calendar in this café is suspended in time and space. Nothing changes, no one escapes from here. It’s stuck on a single day, April nineteenth. Not the last eleven days of April or any days in May or June. Nor, as Vicente Fernández would point out later, the last two hundred and fifty-six days of nineteen sixty, nineteen sixty-one and nineteen sixty-two, or the first one hundred and eighty-one days of nineteen sixty-three. I like literature better than math, so I use letters and words to express numbers—although, it’s true that when I write poetry, I do use numbers to count the syllables. . . Together we live in a suspended time, eleven syllables, that’s a hendecasyllable. An angel with its enormous wings of chains is another. Eleven syllables.

Today is July first, nineteen sixty-three. The ancient, practically prehistoric calendar is a metaphor for our paralyzed nation. I assume the Café Lepanto will be my regular hangout for the next three months since it’s right next door to Editorial Universo, the publishing house on Calle Lepanto. My literature professor told me that learning to write is like learning to see, you have to focus on details that help you make sense of the world. Right now, I’m focusing on a calendar that’s stuck on a single day, and thinking about this parched nation, this sweltering, torpid city, this existence with no future. In a way, I’m grateful for the old-fashioned wooden calendar, with its slots where you insert the days and the months that are painted on small wooden slats. The photos on the calendars in the other bars and shops around the neighborhood are stale. At least here in the Café Lepanto there aren’t any photos of holy week processions, no virgins, no saints, no starlets, no tacky women posing with bottles of Soberano cognac which is being promoted as a man’s drink. I love depriving the church of its capital letters. My literature professor says that to become a writer you need to cultivate a few obsessions. It gives you personality, worldliness. Artists are obsessives. The poet Juan Ramón Jiménez used to write the letter j in words that everyone else spells with a g: antholojy, jeneration, relijion. It’s painful to read, but that’s the point, to write and cause discomfort. I am the master of the premeditated spelling error. Some of my professors condemn my use of the lower case to write god. But that’s my obsession, my insolence. In my village, I’m famous for being insolent. I want my writing to be famous for insolence, too.

Beneath the battered old wooden calendar with an air of dignity but suspended in time, the Café Lepanto fills up with seekers of water and coffee. Vicente Fernández greets them, people come and go but there, inside, time stands still. We’re suffering the heat and the drought of a summer that is prehistoric, dense, and distracted. My literature professor likes Ramón del Valle-Inclán because he was a novelist who wrote unforgettable descriptions using three adjectives. Madrid was absurd, brilliant, and starving. El Marqués de Bradomín, Valle-Inclán’s most famous fictional character, was ugly, catholic, and sentimental. Summertime in Granada is like his life: withered, dense, and distracted. Time will not march on, no one will update the calendar, and we will continue stuck in the same day, the same month, the same year, even though a new school year will start, the cold will come, the mountains will wake up white with snow, my parents will get older, and I will take more Latin and language history classes at the University. Time will not pass, and we will continue to inhabit a city that’s prehistoric, dense, and distracted, a city with no future, nailed to a calendar that can’t move.

Not a bad metaphor to kick off my writing about this summer. Today, Monday, July first, nineteen sixty-three, I climbed the stairs to the Universo offices. Shadowy, shabby, and asthmatic, that describes the stairs at number seven Calle Lepanto. I had a noon appointment with Vicente Fernández. The secretary, who seemed nice enough, paused her phone call to tell me that Don Vicente had gone out for coffee. She said I could wait in his office or go look for him in the Café Lepanto. I decided the café was better. As the secretary turned back to her call, the swoosh of the electric fan stirred up only sadness.

Yes, you’re in Motril, right? Your name? Yes, please. Your phone number? As soon as someone from sales is available, he’ll contact you. Pardon? No, I don’t have that information, but. . . . In half an hour. Of course. Thank you, sir.

The state of the office was enough of an excuse to choose the café: a metal bookshelf, paint peeling off the walls, the smell of aging and yellowing wallpaper, two closed doors, a secretary on the phone and a couple of armchairs too scary to sit in. All that, and the fact that I hadn’t had breakfast yet. My literature professor is partial to the intelligent use of humor when writing about pretty much anything. Go for the smile, even at the saddest moments. To write is to seduce. Humor with tears, humor with hunger, café con leche.

I got to the bar to find the calendar waiting for me, suspended on April nineteenth, nineteen sixty. What did I do on that day three years ago? My literature professor insists that to write is to negotiate with memory. I have a good memory, it’s the forgetting I’m no good at. I remember those who’ve helped me, and I never forget those who’ve done me wrong. My mother thinks that only spiteful people hold a grudge. I’m not spiteful. I do forgive, but I don’t forget. I don’t like Don Mateo, for example, the high school teacher who threw me out of his class on April nineteenth, nineteen sixty, just because he didn’t like me. He expelled me five and a half times during the two classes I suffered through with him. The half was because one day he threw me out, then changed his mind and followed me out into the hallway to ask me to come back.

Come on back, León, I don’t want to throw you out today. It’s your onomastic.

I’m not sure if it was April nineteenth, nineteen fifty-nine, or April nineteenth, nineteen- sixty. But he threw me out of class and then forgave me, because April nineteenth is my saint’s day, the feast of pope León IX, saint León, the same date that’s suspended forever on the wall of the Café Lepanto. Every day is my saint’s day, or my onomastic, as that pedant Don Mateo would say. I promise I won’t write the word onomastic again, ever. Farewell, onomastic, farewell. My saint’s day! Even if you don’t believe in miracles you have to admit that luck plays a mysterious part in our lives. Farewell, Don Mateo, may you remain, sir, forever entombed in your classroom, and you can keep your onomastic and your expulsions, because now I’ve successfully completed my first year at the University of Granada.

The barman said he became a widower on April nineteenth, nineteen sixty, the day his life lost all meaning. His wife died on my saint’s day. Strange coincidence. I prefer to think of death not as stillness but as absence of life. They’re not the same thing. The dead are in cemeteries, surrounded by flowers and forgetting. The absence of life walks the streets every day, it goes to work, to school, it has coffee in the bars, and it seeps into our bodies when we try to think or dream. I’m not a resentful person, I just don’t want anyone to force me to keep quiet. Sometimes no one can shut me up. I’m not domesticated like a mule, or like my father. I refuse to follow orders. My father curses the day he decided to call me León. He’s convinced that naming me for a wild animal shaped my character.

So, you’re León Egea Extremera.

Yes, Don Vicente.

You can drop the ‘Don.’ I’m your colleague, not your boss. The boss is Don Alfonso, but you won’t see much of him in the office this summer. Would you like a coffee?

Yes, and some toast. Vicente seems like a good person. . . too good. One of those guys who never gets into trouble.

Vicente knows my literature professor. They met when Universo published my professor’s book. That’s the connection that got me this summer job. It’s a great opportunity that I’m really excited about, and really need, and something else I owe to my professor’s classes and his way of thinking. I don’t think he and Vicente are actual friends, though, because their personalities are so different. Vicente’s got that respectful, solicitous manner of a salesman: he talks, he smiles, he clams up. He’s pleasant, he listens, he’s attentive, he tries to be friendly, but as soon as you start talking about your own life, tell some story or start to describe some event, he withdraws, and says he doesn’t need to know about that. Sharing confidences with someone he just met must make him uncomfortable, I guess.

I’m jotting down these memories of that meeting and my first conversation with him so I can develop a profile of my impressions. We sat at a table instead of standing at the bar so I could eat my breakfast comfortably. The widowed barman served me, on Vicente’s tab, a café con leche, toast with butter, and a glass of Lanjarón mineral water from our very own Sierra Nevada. Today the city drought managers turned off the tap water at eleven-thirty in the morning. A drought. Just what a city suspended in time needs. But I’m not complaining. I ate a good breakfast. Vicente is generous if a bit lacking in spirit. I started babbling out of sheer gratitude, content with the breakfast and my new job. When I shared some details about my life, my friendship with my literature professor, my run-ins with the priest who teaches Latin in my village, my father’s fears, the advantages of not going home to my village this summer and avoiding another argument with the mayor, Vicente said:

I don’t need to know about that.

His indifference put me off a bit, but then he smiled and began to tell me about my new job. Universo just published a three-volume encyclopedia set. The ad campaign they’re running in the newspapers around Granada province promotes the Universo Encyclopedia as an essential learning tool for schoolchildren and a source of wisdom for all. Well, I declared, in this country we’re all still children, even people over fifty. Nobody knows anything. Ignorance rules. Ok, Vicente said, I guess that’s one approach to pitching an encyclopedia sale. But you should be careful how you talk about these things. It doesn’t help to complain and to look down on others, insult them, criticize their illiteracy, as if you were the only wise man in a village of idiots. You’ll get better results displaying optimism, advocating for your passion to help our nation improve and advance, to help our children progress and to get all our families to contribute. You have to open a window to the world for them, to dazzle them with illuminating rays of knowledge. Ok, ok, I told him, I get it.

Then we went up to the office to continue the orientation. Vicente introduced me to Consuelo Astorga, the secretary, and we all went into the space we’re going to share. The calendar on Consuelo’s desk and the almanac on the wall are up to date. The office is not as lively as the bar, but at least up here no one has barricaded himself behind a suspended date. July welcomes me with open arms, as one who aspires to fill the towns and villages of this province with encyclopedias. Consuelo works in the small reception area, just big enough for the two armchairs, a shelf with Universo books on it, and a desk where she receives visitors and screens phone calls. The door to Don Alfonso’s office looks like it’ll be closed all summer. That’s better for me because I don’t do well with authority figures. The office I’m going to share with Vicente has a window that overlooks the interior patio. In winter, the aroma of simmering stew will seep through the windows, just like in the interior patio of my apartment building. But I’ll be gone by October, so that aroma won’t be making me hungry here. Today, the only thing seeping through the windows is the sound of a radio. Our office has a meeting table, five chairs, another shelf full of books and three huge filing cabinets that organize this vast, parched, downcast world of Granada into three sections: A to G, H to O, P to Z. There’s a door to a bathroom with a mirror, a wash basin, and a toilet. Everything is clean but shabby. The mirror shows little interest in reflecting the image of any hand washer who stands before it. The obstinate stink of disinfectant competes with the murky odors drifting in from the building’s interior. Powers of observation: another essential quality in a writer and a must for someone who’s studying how he’s going to spend the next three months. This will be my kingdom until fall term.

The work is easy. It consists of answering the phone when some sap falls for our newspaper ads and calls in. We try to sell them encyclopedias. Once we set the hook, all we need to do is fill out the forms and thank you very much. If they hesitate, you have to pitch a personal visit to their homes to demonstrate the books. Arrive, observe, convince. Access to this compilation of knowledge about the universe benefits any home, school, library, office, or city hall. I have a hunch that travel will be the most interesting part of this job. According to my literature professor, anyone who aspires to be a writer must acquire knowledge of the human condition and of life in Spain’s villages. Experience feeds the ability to see. Learning to write is learning to see.

Everything’s in order. Everyone’s happy. I didn’t want to go home to my village during summer vacation and now, luckily, I have a job that lets me stay in the city instead. My father wanted to avoid any more problems with the mayor, and he was relieved to keep the danger, meaning me, far away. My landlady was happy to charge me half the normal rent during these months when students abandon the city and the apartment rental business collapses. With my salary, I’ll be able to save enough money for next semester’s books. And I’m going to take full advantage of this real-life experience to develop my skills as a writer. I’m going to learn how to see, develop my memory, cultivate my powers of observation, elaborate series of three adjectives and cultivate my use of humor. I think the intelligent humor bit is going to be easy for me, from what I’ve observed in the office and knowing that we have some trips to the provinces coming up. That’s where I’ll find interesting characters and their humble affairs suspended in time, calendars with no days and faucets with no water. I won’t need to be super smart to seem super smart and fill the pages of this journal with good humor. I’ll recount the adventures and adversities of a future writer during this hot, dry, prehistoric, and bewildering summer of nineteen sixty-three.

Vicente Fernández Fernández isn’t tall or short, skinny or fat, smart or stupid, agreeable or disagreeable, friend or enemy, young or old. I’ve been working with him a week now, but it’s hard to form an opinion. But then, is it really necessary to have an opinion about someone? Well, it’s never a bad thing to know who you’re working with, who’s giving you advice, who’s inviting you for a cup of coffee. Also, if you want to be a writer you have to delve into the human condition. My literature professor, Ignacio Rubio, constantly repeated that advice when he was talking to us about Benito Pérez Galdós’ novel Misericordia. Capturing the human condition is always your objective, the prize for words woven as finely as a spider’s web.

I’ve met a lot of people in my life, each with a unique name and unique personality. I know more dark-haired people than blondes, more thin people than fat, more short people than tall. But those aren’t the important things. My mother organizes people into the good and the bad, those who have a righteous heart and those who live with bitterness. But reality is organized differently. What counts is hierarchy and power, not whether you’re a good egg or a bad egg. In the end, there are those who give orders and those follow them. Of course, there are always exceptions, and I like the kind of people who, whatever their luck of birth, don’t feel compelled to give orders but don’t necessarily obey them either. I get along with people who seem in command without barking out orders, and who refuse to obey, even though they may have to bite their tongues in the process. And there you have an example of introspection, something else I’m going to practice now and then in this journal.

I know I’ll get to like Vicente because he never tries to humiliate anyone, or to order anyone around. When it comes to the people I love, especially my family, I’ve learned to respect them even if they were born to obey. I acknowledge this and I accept it, it’s understandable being from the village I’m from and having the father I have. But affection aside, I confess that I only truly admire those people who refuse to take orders. Pedro el Pastor refused and broke his walking stick over the back of the mayor’s son instead. I can’t obey either, it’s very hard for me to shut up and stay still. I bury myself in my books as a way to avenge injustices without causing trouble. My father knows the score. He feels sorry for Pedro el Pastor. But he’s afraid to say what he thinks because it might lead to conflict. He just looks away, smiles, and murmurs good afternoon. He always says that he may not know how to read, but life is not a novel, and in this country the beatings, the detentions and the deaths are very real.

I suspect Vicente is one of those people who just quietly does his job without getting into any trouble. But I don’t really know. It seems hard for him to converse, comment on stories in the newspaper, talk about his life. He’s polite and pleasant enough, but his silences impose a distance, a lack of spontaneity. Silences without secrets suggest fear, not sincerity. It’s a safety measure. Like he’s afraid of something unexpected. It seems odd for a man of the world, who’s travelled, who’s been to Paris. Sometimes you’d think he’s never even really left the office. He’s nothing more than a good man who’s willing to put up with tedious hours at a desk, glasses of water at the Café Lepanto and the rumbling engines of the provincial